The first week is super tough! I walked into my first class and my sensei's not speaking a lick of English! It was really intense walking in there trying to figure out what was going on. I guess since the first day I've learned quite a bit, it just doesn't really feel like it in comparison to how much I still have to learn!
My companion, Jensen Shimai is so great! We're never apart, and we don't really mind it. I'm already used to having roommates (4 of them) and all of the shimaitashi in my district are also so great! Subarachi! It's amazing how many sister missionaries we have here at the MTC right now. My district is 13 people, 8 elders and 5 sisters (chorotashi and shimaitashi). We all get along really well! We all love each other and it's like a little family away from home :) It makes it a lot easier to have people I enjoy around me all the time.
The spirit here is always so strong, I've learned so much about myself than I ever thought was possible. I think I started the week off with too many expectations and the MTC was nothing like I thought it would be. I am only in language training for 3 hours a day, and the rest of the day I'm doing companion study, personal scripture study, companion/personal language study, etc etc. At first I was frustrated that I was doing everything on my own and that was getting me down because I felt that it was going to be impossible to learn Japanese by myself. I think that at that point I realized, yes it would be impossible to learn Japanese all on my own and there was one person I definitely could rely on to help me. I knew that Heavenly Father was there, willing to listen to my prayers. My struggle with the language is real, and I needed to take the burden off of myself because I don't have to do it on my own.
On Saturday my district took an online questionaire to see what our strengths and weaknesses were. I scored pretty low on patience...I new I would. The whole week I had been dealing so much with being impatient with my companion and impatient with myself that there's no wonder I was getting frustrated with learning Japanese! I've set some goals to work on my patience and I've been a heck of a lot happier since then. :) The devotional we had on Sunday also talked a little about how we need to rely on the Lord's time table instead of our own, and I know that was speaking straight to me.
Sacrament meeting on Sunday was all in Japanese! It was overwhelming at first but I think I'll really start enjoying it. It's actually pretty cool, our branch is splitting because yesterday we just got 12 or 13 Nihonjin (Japanese missionaries) who will be here for a couple weeks, then we are getting about 60 new English speaking missionaries going to Japan the week after the Nihonjin leave! God really is speeding up his work!
No comments:
Post a Comment